na capital da Turquia, Ancara, os professores que marchavam sob a bandeira da “educação secular e respeito pelo trabalho” foram jateados de cor amarela pela força de segurança; a polícia israelense usou azul cerúleo brilhante para identificar atiradores de pedra palestinos em Bil’in; e na Coreia do Sul os manifestantes que marchavam contra a visita do presidente dos Estados Unidos, George W Bush, a Seul foram iluminados com um tom laranja antes de serem carregados em massa por veículos da polícia.
History after apartheid is a major installation, a body of two-colour lithographic prints, and a film. The work addresses the apartheid security forces’ use of purple dye dispensed from water cannons on armoured vehicles to mark protesters attending mass democracy marches and demonstrations, to identify and arrest those in attendance. This image of purple stained people fleeing police has become iconographic of the mass liberation movement against apartheid. A symbolical event towards the end of apartheid was the “Purple Rain Protest” on 2nd September of 1989 in Cape Town. As the march approached South Africa’s Parliament, a police water cannon with purple dye hosed thousands of Mass Democratic Movement supporters. The first truck-mounted water cannon was used for riot control in Nazi Germany in the beginning of the 1930s. The apartheid security forces re-appropriated this technique adding dye to the water stream and similar images of saturated indelibly marked protestors exist throughout the global-south today. In India, pro-democracy protesters were blasted with purple dye as in apartheid South Africa; Ugandan police marked opposition leaders who were protesting in luminous pink; the Hungarian police used a combination of blue and green to disperse a pro-socialist demonstration in central Budapest; in the Turkish capital, Ankara, teachers who marched under the banner of “Secular education and respect for work” were coloured bright yellow by the security forces; Israeli police used bright cerulean blue to identify Palestinian stone-throwers in Bil’in, and in South Korea protesters who marched against US President George W. Bush’s visit to Seoul were illuminated in an orange hue before being carried off in police vehicles en-masse.
www.goodman-gallery.com
África do Sul